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Was Sam Bankman-Fried Running a Ponzi Scheme?

SBF/Alameda’s initial strategy was arbitraging price differences between US and Korea/Japan. The different crypto exchanges in different countries would have different prices for the same coin.

In theory this was possible but in practice it was basically impossible. They lost money in Korea due to capital controls, they made some money in Japan but still lost money overall due to the enormous amounts they had to borrow and the high interest rates they were paying.

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What is the Greater Fool Theory?

In finance, the greater fool theory suggests that one can sometimes make money through the purchase of overvalued assets — items with a purchase price drastically exceeding the intrinsic value — if those assets can later be resold at an even higher price.

In this context, one "fool" might pay for an overpriced asset, hoping that he can sell it to an even "greater fool" and make a profit.

This only works as long as there are enough new "greater fools" willing to pay higher and higher prices for the asset.

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How Do You Differentiate Good Acting From Bad Acting?

I’m a director who has been working with actors for almost 30 years, and I’m the son of a film historian. I’ll give you my definition of good acting. But I really want to stress (for the last time, then I’ll quit) is that if I say Pacino is great and you disagree, my experience does not make me right and you wrong. It just means we have different tastes.

For me, an actor is good if …

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What Was Life Like During The Holodomor: The Great Famine Of Ukraine 1932 to 1933

holomodor

It is known as the Holodomor. The communist induced famine killed up to 3.9 million people between 1932-33 in Ukraine alone.

The reasons for the famine are a subject of scholarly and political debate. Some scholars suggest that the man-made famine was a consequence of the economic problems associated with changes implemented during the period of Soviet industrialisation. There are also those who blame a systematic set of policies perpetrated by the Soviet government under Stalin designed to exterminate the Ukrainians.

So what was life like during the famine?

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How Did Germany De-Radicalize Its People After The Fall of The Nazi Party?

(Force confrontation: German soldiers react to footage of concentration camps, 1945.)

The process of denazification and the trials of various war criminals in Germany was enormous. The Nazi party had 8.5 million members by the end of the war. Somewhere in the region of 18 million people served in the German armed forces during the war, many of whom had committed atrocities and war crimes. 17.2 million people voted for the Nazi party in the 1933 election. Almost 22 million had been members of the German Labour Front, the Nazi replacement for the Trade Unions. Perhaps as many as 45 million individuals were members of or associated with organs of the Nazi party. As such, the process of denazification would have to be conducted on an epic scale.

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How Were Pilots Chosen To Become Kamizakes?

how were kamikaze pilots chosen

Because the tokkōtai operation was a guarantee of death, the top military officers, quite hypocritically, decided not to make this operation an official part of the imperial navy or army, where orders were issued in the name of the emperor. They preferred to make it appear that the corps was formed voluntarily and that men volunteered to be pilots.

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